


The Sun That Lights My Days

by collitherie



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Ficlet, Historical Accuracy, Historical References, M/M, Returning to Malta (The Old Guard), Sharing a Bed, Short & Sweet, Sleepy Cuddles, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26943361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collitherie/pseuds/collitherie
Summary: Joe will spend the next one hundred years greeted by the same sight and never tire of it.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 3
Kudos: 103





	The Sun That Lights My Days

Morning hangs in the air thick with salt, lofting through the open window and bringing with it the sound of distant waves breaking on the shore. A gentle breeze lifts a stray lock of Nicky’s hair. Joe will spend the next one hundred years greeted by the same sight and never tire of it.

Nicky still dozes, his face resting against Joe’s shoulder, his nose tickling the soft skin in the junction of his arm and chest. He has the urge to grab his sketchbook from the other side of the bed to further immortalize this man onto paper, but he doesn’t move. Mostly he wishes to stay just as they are, snuggled up together in the light of yet another day.

It shouldn’t surprise him by now, how Nicky looks nearly the same as he did when they first met. Well, met not being the most appropriate word considering it was more of a stabbing than anything else. To him, Nicky had been yet another western invader, a crusader as history would deem, and just another enemy to fall to his sword. That is, until he didn’t.

He fell, of course. Many times, as they often say. But not for long before he rose again. A trait shared with Joe himself, as he quickly had come to find out. Yet despite this crusader’s religious righteousness and the pursuit of glory he entered the Christian campaign with, his motivations came to fail him with each lethal strike he received anew. 

He still remembers, most clearly, the first time he saw Nicky as more than the undying adversary across the battlefield. Nicky had been confused then, his only solid ground had shifted under his feet after his discovery, as it had for Joe. Yet despite this earth shattering revelation, he had been one of only a small number of other Franks trying to bar his brethren from slaughtering the city's remaining civilians who sought sanctuary in the old mosque.

In the end, it mattered only as a testament to his character since Nicky alone could not protect its doors for long. Joe himself had fallen countless times attempting to fight through wave after wave of heavily armored soldiers up to the front. 

He had made it up to the crusader, the one who was like him, just after the masses had flooded into the mosque, continuing their rampage. There he had looked at Nicky, stared at him, awaiting answers that wouldn’t come for nearly a century. He was captured for the first time, there in Jerusalem, held by the invaders who could not kill him, no matter how numerous their attempts. 

And it was Nicky who came to him in the dungeon at night, bearing wine, sparse amounts of food, and what few words of the broken languages they shared. It was he who freed him, and it was he that he followed out of the holy city and into the immortal unknown. 

It is he who now stirs slowly against his side, breathing deep and long, opening his eyes to the world once more. Nicky’s hand slides up his chest and out from under the sheets that are indelicately spread across them.  
He mumbles a small good morning in his original tongue and stifles a yawn. His bright smile quickly replaces the sleepy gesture. “How long were you staring at me?”

Joe smirks down at him, craning his neck to place a kiss on Nicky’s face. “Not long enough.”

And he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> Just had to share this small moment that has been stuck in my head ever since watching (and rewatching) this movie! 
> 
> The title comes from the comic's version of the Van Speech™. 
> 
> The mosque mentioned is the Al-Aqsa Mosque in what is now the Old City of Jerusalem. According to historians, this mosque was briefly protected by Tancred (an Italo-Norman noble) and his soldiers but the other crusaders got past them and indescriminately killed everyone inside. My thoughts are that Nicky would have stood with them in defense of those who sought sanctuary in the mosque and that perhaps it would have been the first moment Joe witnessed that would give rise to his description of Nicky has having, "a kindness of which this world is not worthy."
> 
> And of course, while writing this I pictured them taking a well deserved break in Malta =)


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